


Old Time's Sake

by kimpernickel



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Light Angst, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:05:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5564788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimpernickel/pseuds/kimpernickel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a shame that tragedy has to bring two brothers together, but at least they're together. Even years after, somehow, things don't really change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Time's Sake

“ _Pssssst_ , _Wirt_.”

Wirt moaned and opened his crusty eyes. The digital alarm clock on the end table flashed in red, the only light in his room, the numerals “2:52.” He closed his eyes and pulled the sheets closer to him.

“ _Wwwwiiiiirrtt_.” Greg’s hush moved closer to his ear.

“Hnnn…” Wirt murmured. His eyes reopened and fell upon the silhouette of his brother’s face at the edge of the twin bed. Wirt squinted to study Greg’s face, faintly illuminated by the red glow of the alarm clock. Instead of the smooth, little, pudgy face he anticipated, the Greg in front of him sported a beard and, though his face was round in shape, it lacked most of the baby fat from his childhood. Caught in this half-asleep state, Wirt jerked up. His feet hung over the edge of the bed, his form too tall for it since he turned sixteen. Though the room looked just the same as it did during his childhood and adolescence, this wasn’t a morning akin to the four years Wirt spent in the mediocre hell known as high school. It was the present.

Still, regardless of the time, only one question coursed through his brain. “Whassit now, Greg?” He sounded like his fourteen or fifteen-year-old self.

“I can’t sleep,” Greg whispered.

Wirt glowered. His half-brother was twenty-six years old, and yet he acted like he was twenty years younger. In many ways, some things never changed. “Whadyou want me t’do about it?” Wirt grumbled and rubbed his eyes, his grouchiness from waking up filtering into his words.

“We should go to the cemetery,” Greg suggested.

“We haven’t buried her yet,” Wirt answered, but he knew full and well why Greg wanted to go to the cemetery. “It’ll be locked up anyways, we’ll have to wait until sunrise.”

Greg, however, was unwavering in his determination. He plopped himself next to Wirt and stared at him. “We haven’t been in years. I think the last time we were there, I had just graduated. C’mon, be adventurous.”

“ _You_ can afford to be ‘adventurous.’ You don’t have a wife and children who won’t be affected if you get arrested.”

“Oh please, I think Sara will understand this kind of deviance.” Greg stood up and darted for the door to the hallway. “ _Please_ Wirt? We won’t be able to in the day.”

Wirt groaned as he himself stood up, making his way to his coat draped over the back of his desk chair. “I’ll be down in a minute,” he said, and he pretended he hadn’t noticed Greg victoriously muttering “yes” under his breath before stepping out of Wirt’s room. Instead, Wirt pushed his arms into the sleeves of his coat and searched the dark room for a pair of socks and shoes to wear. He would’ve changed into a decent pair of pants, but he was too disgruntled to even consider changing out of his warm pajama bottoms. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat to make sure he had a few essentials, like his phone and his wallet. The phone was charging on his nightstand, and his wallet was on the desk—the neatest that desk had ever looked.

But there was something in his pocket. Something thin. Something paper. Wirt pulled it out and stared at it in the dark. He didn’t need to read it, though. After hours and hours of writing it before finally sending it to the local newspaper, he had his mother’s obituary memorized word-for-word.

* * *

As suspected, the entrance gate was closed, and neither of the brothers were willing to climb over the gate or the walls into the cemetery while they still wore their pajama pants. The one bench to the left of the gate was unoccupied, however, and so they sat in the crisp early morning. They looked at the empty street before them, the streetlights drowning out the natural silvery glow of the moonlight. Wirt shivered.

“It’s been almost twenty years,” Greg said after a few minutes of silence. He didn’t have to describe _what_. Wirt knew. Halloween 1993 was long gone, replaced with years and years of new milestones, new experiences, new mistakes. And for several years, Halloween became more than just a spooky celebration for Wirt and Greg. After taking Greg on his trick-or-treating rounds, they spend a little time in the Eternal Garden Cemetery to reminisce over their time in the Unknown. Even throughout college, Wirt made every effort he could to be with Greg on Halloween, even if Halloween was during the week. Even when Greg went to high school and found friends to hang out with, they squeezed at least thirty minutes together to sit and contemplate over the Unknown. Things got difficult once Greg went to an out-of-state university and Wirt married Sara, and the last time they got to go was in 2009, a few months after Greg had graduated and had just started a new, very entry-level job. They kept in touch and saw each other frequently, but it wasn’t the same. They had their own obligations and responsibilities to attend to. They were both adults.

“Time flies,” Wirt responded. A part of him wanted to add, “And growing up sucks,” but now that Greg was twenty-six, there was no need to mentioning it out loud.

“I have a question about _Tome_ ,” Greg blurted, almost automatically. Wirt snapped his head to stare at his younger brother. It was an unspoken rule between them: neither of them spoke about _Tome of the Unknown_.

“And don’t plead the fifth,” Greg continued, “We both lived that story. I feel like I have family privilege to knowing all your authorly secrets.”

Wirt ignored the made-up word of ‘authorly’ and sighed. He wished Greg chose a better time to talk about the book he wrote—preferably sometime _after_ their mother’s funeral—but he knew Greg had been meaning to discuss this ever since _Tome_ was published three years ago, and unspoken rule between them emerged. Greg wasn’t going to wait another three years or more before Wirt finally caved in to talk about it. Come to think of it, that was probably why Greg insisted they go to the cemetery in the middle of the night.

“If you promise to never sign the rights over so a movie adaptation can be made, then you can ask a question,” Wirt replied.

“You still hold all the rights.”

“When I’m dead, you and Sara will be handling my estate.”

“Fine. I promise to never let a studio adapt your book into a movie, and when I die and our kids take over your estate, I will make them promise, too. Now can I ask my question?”

Wirt took a deep breath. “Sure.”

He watched as Greg pulled a small paperback copy of _Tome_ out of his pocket. _Oh yeah_ , Greg definitely planned this entire outing. He flipped to the last few pages of the book. “Why does it end the way it does?”

“Greg, really?” Of all the questions Greg could have, he asked _that_ one? “You know this question—”

“No, I mean,” Greg interrupted, “why does it end like this?” He cleared his throat and held up his phone as a flashlight to read the pages.

“‘ _Goodbye, Elijah,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Beatrice,’ he returned.’”_ Greg flipped the page. “‘ _Elijah woke up underwater and instinctively grabbed the blurry mass that was Collin before him._ _There was water, lights, and sirens before the white of the hospital room._ ’” He closed the book and stared at Wirt once more.

“You _know_ why,” Wirt asserted.

“Of course I know!” Greg half-hollered, but his volume was from enthusiasm rather than exasperation. “But why is it _written_ like this? Why is it so sparse? You remember more than I do. What _else_ happens? What happened when we were found? Why does everyone we meet not have some kind of resolution of what happens to them? Why would you keep out all those details? Why does it just _end_ with us? Why don’t your readers get to know about the rest of the Unknown?”

Wirt frowned. He knew that question would come from someone one day—whether it came from Greg or an interviewer or a reader or one of his colleagues at the college. He recited back a prepared answer: “I want readers to make up their own minds about it. All of it. What the Unknown is. It’s a children’s book. Outright saying the Unknown is some mysterious Purgatory-like realm would be too heavy, don’t you think?”

“Maybe...” Greg trailed off, clearly unconvinced. “Children are smarter than you think.”

“I know that,” Wirt answered, “that’s why if they come to that conclusion themselves, I applaud them.”

Greg kneeled over with his elbows on his thighs and stayed quiet for a few seconds. “It feels incomplete,” he finally said, soft, almost defeated.

“It’s told through our point of views. We don’t know what happens to everyone in the Unknown.”

“But Beatrice?”

Wirt’s breath hitched. “What about her?”

“Didn’t you cut Beatrice’s wings so she could be human again and help _her_ family? Did she lead us back to the lake? Do you want the readers to make up their own minds about what happens when the two of you said goodbye? Beatrice at least deserves _more_ , don’t you think?”

“I guess so.”

“So why didn’t you _write_ it?”

“Because I don’t know what happened to her.”

“You could’ve made something up.”

“And what if that wasn’t how it happened for her, or anyone else?”

“It would’ve given _us_ some peace of mind—”

“I don’t think so.”

“ _Why_ did you write it like this?”

“Because I don’t remember anything else!”

They sat in the chilly silence, with only the sound of a light wind rustling the leaves both on the ground and still on the trees. Wirt turned away as if to hide the trickle of tears escaping the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away with the back of his hand, but he couldn’t look Greg in the eye. Instead, Greg pressed a hand on his back to comfort him.

“What do you mean you don’t remember ‘anything else?’” Greg whispered.

Wirt inhaled and held the breath for a second or two before exhaling it. In all the years he and Greg spent pondering over their time in the mysterious world over the garden wall, not once did he ever mention any of this. He only discussed what he _did_ remember, the most vivid and colorful memories. “I don’t know what happened right before waking up in the lake,” he confessed. “The Woodsman blew out the Beast’s lantern, and it all went black for me. I don’t know if I cut Beatrice’s wings, or if she took us to the lake. I just remember that she said goodbye, and I said it back to her. Then I was in the lake. I don’t _know_ what happens.”

Greg hesitated before asking, in a meek voice, “At all?”

“At all,” Wirt confirmed. “That’s why I wrote the ending the way it is. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know what happens to the Unknown afterwards.” He leaned against the cemetery’s iron-wrought fence. “ _Tome_ is our story, and I wanted to reflect that.”

The wind went still for several minutes, and for a solid two or three, the brothers sat in perfect silence. Tonight was similar to Halloween of 1993: a chilly night in October, with a crescent moon suspended in the dark, starry sky. The street adjacent to the Eternal Garden Cemetery hadn’t changed much, except the pharmacy at the end of the street had changed names. Twenty years could pass by at the blink of an eye, and either time changed drastically, or not at all.

“I knew this book was kind of our autobiography, but I…I didn’t know you were going for accuracy,” Greg broke the silence. “I don’t remember much about Pottsfield, except that there were lots of pumpkins. I thought you were just embellishing, you know, for the sake of a story.”

“The only embellishments are our names.”

Greg chuckled. “You look like an ‘Elijah.’”

“Mom once told me that she considered naming you ‘Collin’ before she and Kip settled on ‘Gregory.’”

They continued to sit on the bench, cold and wishing to collapse onto their beds and fall asleep, but too entranced with their discussion on the Unknown to stand up and make their way back to their home. Wirt ignored the heavy pull of his eyelids and thumbed through Greg’s copy of _Tome._

“Do you really think that poorly of yourself?” Greg inquired.

“Pardon?” It was an involuntary response, but Wirt heard Greg clearly.

Greg pointed to the book. “The way you portray Elijah isn’t very…nice, I guess. He’s kind of a jerk to Collin.”

Wirt scowled at the pages in his hands. “I _was_ a jerk to you. Are you sure you read this book?”

“At least once year since it was published.” Wirt felt Greg’s eyes on him, but he refused to look at his brother. “I tried to believe that you were just adding it in for the sake of character development,” Greg rambled on, “to make the story more relevant and real and everything else I learned in my one semester of American Lit.”

Wirt shrugged. “I was very selfish then,” he muttered.

“I’m not upset with you.”

“You should be.”

“No, I shouldn’t be.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re my brother,” Greg shot back. He reached for the book and brandished it in front of Wirt’s face. “ _And_ , if this memoir is anything to go by, you learned from your mistakes and grew from them. I already had a great brother before, and after the Unknown, I got the _best_ brother.”

Even twenty years later, Greg thought too highly of people and was prone to hyperbole. Neither high school nor college tarnished his optimism, and Wirt wouldn’t deny that he admired Greg’s perseverance through it all. The Unknown was one journey, almost an endless one, but _life_ and growing up was its own beast. Somehow, Greg wasn’t just surviving. He was living.

The wind picked up again, causing both of them to shiver. Wirt stood up from the bench. “We need to get some rest before the service,” he stated.

Greg followed suit. “Hey, Wirt?”

“Hmm?”

“After, can we come back here when the gate is open? For old time’s sake?”

Wirt didn’t even try to fight the curling corners of his mouth. Despite the frigid air blowing against him, he was warm all over for the first time since his mother died. He patted his brother’s back as they walked back to Greg’s car.

“For old time’s sake.”

**Author's Note:**

> The events of this one-shot are set in the fall of 2013.


End file.
